This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

World Cup 2014: Planning wobbly, but expect magic: Kelly

South Africa's 2010 World Cup was vexing and ill-organized, but the people made it magical. Expect the same in Brazil.

Brazilian football icon Pele waves during the unveiling of the Hublot Countdown Clock. The event marks the start of the one-year countdown to the opening 2014 World Cup game in Brazil. (Silvia Izquierdo / AP)

Wednesday marked one year out from the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, the country football emigrated to in order to avoid English summers.

From this vantage, it’s looking a little wobbly.

The Brazilian squad is as weak as it’s been in years — too young, and in what passes at this level for disarray. Manager Luiz Felipe Scolari is still searching for his perfect XI amongst a group of players in their early 20s. There is the widespread feeling that this tournament arrives four years too early.

The Brazilian public is already in something close to panic. The team was jeered off the field after a recent friendly draw against Chile.

“One day you’re booed, the next you’re praised. Football’s like that,” the brightest star on the current side, Neymar, said afterward.

Article Continued Below

True, especially in Brazil. But it’s not a hopeful sign, is it?

The Confederations Cup — an international warm-up held the year before every World Cup in order to make sure all the new stadiums aren’t going to fall down — begins Saturday. Everyone’s urging calm while the storm’s still gathering.

As he is wont to do on a variety of topics — football, Brazilian culture, reasons why Diego Maradona is a knob — Pele waded in this week.

“Let’s support all the players, even if things don’t work out because this is us preparing for the World Cup,” he chided. “(L)et’s not boo them.”

Pele remains hopeful. That’s his M.O. Pele will be hopeful as a comet is hitting the Earth.

A less ballyhooed, but also less compromised national hero captured the mood better.

“The group of players we have now look unlikely to win the World Cup, even with home support,” coach Zico told the Guardian.

Who will win it? Zico likes the look of Argentina.

That’s the great unspoken fear. Not that Brazil will lose, but that their greatest rival — their only real rival — might win on their patch. No European team has ever won a World Cup in the Americas. Based on current qualifying results, that makes this 32-team tournament a tête-à-tête from the off.

Another source of angst is the by-now habitual pre-World Cup hangover. The cost of these events spirals ever upward, and the money is, as usual, largely misspent on items which will show well on TV (i.e. arenas) rather than those that leave some lasting impact (i.e. public transportation). The total cost at the moment sits at $9 billion, nearly $2 billion of which has been spent on stadium construction.

As an example, one of those is located in the nearly unreachable jungle capital of Manaus, at the confluence of two rivers deep in the Amazon. Manaus’ stadium will host four matches. Afterward, the building will be gifted to the local side, which currently sits down in Brazil’s fourth division. It’s unclear what a team that draws an average of 600 fans to a match is going to do with a new 43,000-seat arena.

There is the reasonable fear that Brazil is going to face all the same problems as the last host, South Africa, in drawing foreign fans.

The challenges may in fact be greater. The distance between stadia is enormous. The roads are jammed. There is no rail system to speak of. Flights are few and expensive.

Brazil also maintains its own reputation for casual violence, much of it centred on hooligan firms attached to local clubs. Going to a game is considered so risky, Brazil’s top division has a lower average attendance than Major League Soccer.

Like South Africa, the country suffers from a gaping economic divide, meaning few of the natives will be able to afford tickets. This assumes they can even get them.

FIFA badly erred in 2010, jacking up prices and spreading tickets around to international sales consortiums that could not find buyers. In the end, games would have been empty had they not filled them via freebies to locals. As penance, we were all forced to suffer the curse of the vuvuzela.

In the aftermath, most of South Africa’s ruinously expensive stadiums have become rusting, underutilized hulks. The jewel, Soweto’s Soccer City, now functions mainly as a way station for the local bird population.

All the auguries are dark, but there is something about the World Cup that defies logistics.

I recall my first few moments in South Africa three years ago. We flew from Amsterdam with a group of Dutch supporters who’d brought along their own security detail to protect them on the drive from the Jo’burg airport to their lodgings.

Upon exiting the empty terminal, we were led by police into some con artist’s cab. As we drove to our rented house, we passed a corpse in the road.

“Another is dead,” the cabbie pointed out lazily.

We spent the first morning sprinting from hedgerow to hedgerow, expecting to take fire at any moment. But on that first day, we wandered into an electronics shop, looking for some equipment. They had none. We were pointed to a mall, several kilometres away. While we stewed, trying to assess the ground cover between here and there, a woman standing along side us turned and said, “I’ll drive you.”

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com